Weekly Update - 128 (Patreon)

Got my first ever paragraph of emotionally-charged criticism this week, so achievement unlocked.  It's interesting to me that someone can be so overflowing with emotions that they just simply can't deal with it any more and they decide to unload it all in an internet comment on a piece of completely optional internet content that no one forced them to read.  I hope that, at the very least, it was cathartic for them.  Hopefully, future critique is a bit more coherent, so that I might be able to consider it thoughtfully and perhaps even learn something from it. Alas, not this time.

Anyway. This Friday I didn't post a sketch because I was working on Max's character sheet.  I've included a preview of the WIP, lemme know what you think!  The eyes still need a lot of work, I know.

Comic this week?  Yes.  I believe so.

Drawing: Max Character sheet and Page 149/150

Playing: Cult of the Lamb

Ramble:

Does anyone remember how I once talked about creative projects and likened them to boarding a ship and sailing across a stormy sea?

The distant shore resembled the end of the journey, the finished project.  So many times in my life have I set foot on one such ship, sailed for a little bit, only to jump off of it at the first sign of a storm and swim back to shore, where it was safe and dry, and where I had access to an infinite number of ships that could potentially take me to any potential shore. When I got on THIS ship, I knew I wanted to see what was on that other shore.  I was bored with starting new projects, exploring new worlds.  I wanted to know what it was like to see something through to completion.  And I still do.

These days though, it feels a lot less like sailing on a ship, and more like swimming across the ocean.  You walk down from the beach, where the sand meets the waves, and you can walk out into the water for quite aways without too much trouble, as long as you keep an eye out for stingrays.  Eventually the water gets too deep, and you can't stand any more, and if you want to keep going you have no choice but to start swimming.  And every mile of progress you make is under your own power alone.  You don't have the help of a ship with sails, or wind.  In fact, everything is battering against you at times.  The current threatens to carry you back to shore, the waves roar high over your head and crash down upon your naked body.  Sharks circle you the whole time, threatening to drag you down into the depths and make a meal of you.  The water itself is ice-cold and it threatens to drown you the instant you stop swimming.  That distant shore, the finished project, can be seen only from time to time, when the weather is calm and the water is flat enough for you to keep your head above it and see off towards the horizon, but most of the time, you're just swimming, constantly, in the direction you think you need to go.  And it's not even a straight line.  You don't have a compass or navigation chart.  It's easy to get off track or even swim in the wrong direction for awhile.  The only way to reach your destination is to keep going.

Luckily, if you get tired, the current or the sharks or the waves will happily carry you right back to the shore you started from.  The easiest choice of all in any pursuit is always to just give up.  But I'm intimately familiar with the shore I started on, and I want to know what's on that distant shore.  And I know I'll never get there unless I keep trying.